Colorado Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Traffic, Jobs

Ex-teacher still passing along her pioneering spirit

Marie Anderson was the only African-American sophomore at East High School in 1929 when a counselor told her she shouldn't worry about grades or going to college.

"She said, 'You'll be wasting your father's money, because all you'll do is be someone's cook or do the day work,' " said Anderson, who married and became Marie Greenwood.

Those words became a challenge to Greenwood — who went on to graduate from West High School, get her college degree from what is now the University of Northern Colorado and become the first African-American teacher under contract at Denver Public Schools.

Greenwood — who turns 95 on Saturday — was honored in 2001 with a school named after her in northeast Denver and had her notes and papers preserved by the Denver Public Library.

This summer she self-published a book about her experiences, called "Every Child Can Learn."

Next month, she will be the guest speaker at the fall commencement of UNC in Greeley and will tell the graduates to continue their lifelong quest for learning and to be ready to fight to get what they want.

"The world does not owe them a thing," she said.

For much of Greenwood's early life, she experienced the barriers of a racist world.

As a fourth-grader, the girl who was the only child of a railroad chef and domestic worker endured insults from her teacher who refused to call on her — though she almost always knew the answer.

"I always wanted to excel," she said in her Denver apartment last week.

Advertisement

"I vowed I was going to be better than everyone else."

A more welcoming place

Greenwood transferred to West High, a more inclusive school under principal Harry V. Kepner.

She graduated in 1931 third in her class. At the time, the state offered full-ride, four-year scholarships to state colleges to the top five graduates at each Denver school.

Greenwood went to Colorado Teacher's College in Greeley, but she had to live off campus with other minorities and could not participate in any club activities.

She also was not allowed to student-teach, but she graduated in four years, took the state teaching exam and accepted a job in 1935 to teach first grade at Denver's Whittier School for $1,200 a year.

"The school was practically all black," Greenwood said. "That was the only place we could teach."

Since she had no classroom experience, her first few weeks were bedlam. Children were out of control, she said.

"The principal told me to forget the theory of teaching with a soft voice and being gentle," she said. "She told me to get control and teach. I lowered the boom."

She taught for 10 more years at the school, married Bill Greenwood in 1943, began having children and moved to a house in west Denver off Sixth Avenue.

Back to the classroom

Greenwood had four children and resumed teaching in 1955 when the principal at Newlon Elementary near her home asked her to teach first grade.

DPS, however, had no black teachers outside of northeast Denver, and administrators were worried.

The first year she began, administrators would call the school to make sure there were no problems.

"By the spring of 1956, the administrators quit calling," she said. "The door was wide open for our minority teachers everywhere."

Greenwood continued to teach at Newlon until 1974. She retired, built a home in the mountains and continued to read to children at libraries and schools. She experienced tragedies in her later life, with her husband dying in a car wreck in 1983 and her eldest son, Richard, dying from cancer in 2003.

Greenwood said she was surprised in 2001 when DPS officials called and said she was going to be honored with her own school.

She tries to go to the school at least four times a year to read to the students.

"Every time I drive up to that school, I am thrilled to death," she said. "I say to myself, 'Thank you, Lord.' "

Missy Franklin, Jenny Simpson, Adeline Gray and three other Colorado women could be big players at the 2016 Rio OlympicsWhen people ask Missy Franklin for her thoughts about the Summer Olympics that will begin a year from Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro, she hangs a warning label on her answer.